The New York Times will end its premium service, TimesSelect, tomorrow, the second anniverary of the service. The change will open the archives to 1987 without a $4.95 fee per view or a $49.95 subscription and will allow access to columnists, such as Tom Friedman and Frank Rich, who’ve been locked behind that blasted door.
TimesSelect has generated about $10 million per year for the paper, which has declined to project ad revenue growth by opening up the contents. In an email to subscribers, The Times said, “we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers…”
I love the word “unfettered.”
So starting tomorrow we’ll all have unfettered access to a host of recipes, food and political articles and yes, even Amanda Hesser’s blistering piece about Emeril Lagasse. I’ll update that post tomorrow. With pleasure.
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I am taking tomorrow off from work so I will be unfettered thus having plenty of time to catch up on blog reading. My first stop will be From Scratch!
Yo, Lin! Isn’t unfettered a great word – and wasn’t it so precious of the Times to use it?
Today’s email to subscribers tells them they will enjoy (unfettered, ahem) use of the Times Reader for the rest of the year. I sure hope most of their subscribers use Win, because Reader doesn’t work on a Mac.